Judge: Health mandate unconstitutional

A federal judge struck down the heart of the Obama administration’s health reform law Monday, ruling that the individual mandate to buy health insurance is unconstitutional.

In the closely watched suit brought by Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, District Judge Henry Hudson found that the mandate “exceeds the constitutional boundaries of congressional power.”

Story Continued Below

Hudson stopped short of blocking the law’s implementation until a higher court acts, but said he expects the administration to honor his ruling.

“The final word will undoubtedly reside with a higher court,” Hudson wrote in his ruling. “In this Court’s view, the award of declaratory judgment is sufficient to stay the hand of the executive branch pending appellate review.”

Within hours of his victory, Cuccinelli called for the case to be fast-tracked up to the Supreme Court, arguing that prolonged uncertainty over the law would be detrimental to all parties involved. “The costs we would have to incur implementing…would be wasted if the bill is unconstitutional,” Cuccinelli told reporters Monday.

The Obama administration, however, doesn’t plan to push the case to the high court early. Doing so would be “premature,” one administration official said at a briefing with reporters this week. And, without the Department of Justice’s backing, Cuccinelli may back off on the issue.

“We have not decided what we would do if the Department of Justice was not agreeable to accelerating or skipping the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals,” he said.

For its part, the Department of Justice said Monday that it’s confident the law will be upheld by higher courts.

“We are disappointed in today’s ruling but continue to believe – as other federal courts in Virginia and Michigan have found – that the Affordable Care Act is constitutional,” said DOJ spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler. “There is clear and well-established legal precedent that Congress acted within its constitutional authority in passing this law and we are confident that we will ultimately prevail.”

The Virginia ruling is arguably the most prominent in an onslaught of legal challenges that immediately followed the law’s passage in March. In another key case in Florida, where 20 states are challenging the law, the court will hear oral arguments on Thursday.

Of the 15 cases that judges have opined on so far, the Virginia suit is the first to strike down any part of the health reform law.

The White House does not believe the decision will have any impact on the ongoing implementation of the health care law. Officials downplayed the suggestion that rulings against the law would create uncertainty in the middle of its implementation, largely because some of the key provisions don’t take effect until 2014. The White House anticipates all challenges to the law will have worked their way through the system by then.